Edwin Ramos denies firing shots in triple killing

S.F. COURTS

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Edwin Ramos, charged with the shooting deaths of a father and his two sons last year, shows in court at the San Francisco Hall of Justice where is was announced that the DA, Kamala Harris, will seek a penalty of life in prison without parole on Thursday Sep. 10, 2009 in San Franicisco, Calif. Harris has always said she wouldn't seek capital punishment. less

Edwin Ramos, charged with the shooting deaths of a father and his two sons last year, shows in court at the San Francisco Hall of Justice where is was announced that the DA, Kamala Harris, will seek a penalty ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Edwin Ramos denies firing shots in triple killing

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The gang member accused of gunning down a father and two of his sons on a San Francisco street testified Monday that he had only driven the killer's car and hadn't fired the shots himself.

Edwin Ramos, 25, spoke quickly and quietly in San Francisco Superior Court about his trouble-racked childhood that led him to join a street gang. He smiled often as he testified, in what he explained was a nervous habit.

But as he recounted the day Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were shot and killed, the smiles became less frequent.

Prosecutors say Ramos opened fire from a car June 22, 2008, on the Bolognas as they drove in the Excelsior neighborhood. Ramos thought at least one of the men in the car belonged to a gang whose members had shot and wounded a gang colleague of Ramos' earlier that day, prosecutors say.

None of the Bolognas was a gang member. A son who survived the attack, Andrew Bologna, now 21, has testified that Ramos fired the fatal shots.

However, Ramos said another member of his Pasadena Locos Sureños gang, Wilfredo "Flaco" Reyesruano, had pulled the trigger while Ramos drove their car.

He said he had been taking Reyesruano to an Oakland hospital to see their wounded gang colleague. Reyesruano was acting erratically, he testified, yelling out random directions and becoming annoyed when Ramos missed a freeway on-ramp.

It was then they encountered the Bolognas, heading back to their Excelsior home from a family picnic.

Ramos said he had been adjusting his car stereo when he cut a left turn from Congdon Street too close and almost ran into the Bolognas' Honda Civic on Maynard Street. Tony Bologna reversed to give him room, Ramos said, and the gang members drove slowly past.

Reyesruano then began yelling gang slogans, reached over Ramos and fired about five shots out the open window, Ramos said.

Danielle Bologna, Tony Bologna's widow, began crying and shaking in the gallery as Ramos recounted the moment when her husband and sons died.

Earlier Monday, Ramos told the court about the family struggles that led him to join a gang.

Relatives who have testified in Ramos' 3-month-old triple-murder trial have depicted him as a confused boy who grew up without parents in rural El Salvador. He came to the United States at age 13 to join his mother, who he said verbally abused him and allowed her boyfriends to beat him.

He said he had run away from home several times and eventually found refuge in an offshoot of the MS-13 gang, 20th Street. He later joined Pasadena Locos Sureños, another MS-13 offshoot in which Reyesruano was prominent.

The defense has painted Reyesruano as a paranoid, drug-addled gangbanger who fled to South Carolina after the Bologna shootings. A friend of his in South Carolina testified that Reyesruano used a fake name and wore beads around his neck that he said protected him from police. She also said he frequently kept up with the case on The Chronicle's website.

Ramos said he had no idea Reyesruano had a gun when he picked him up at his home the day of the slayings. When defense attorney Marla Zamora asked him why he hadn't called police after the killings, he gestured to the courtroom and exclaimed, "Look at what happened when I finally did tell them."

Zamora is expected to continue her questioning of Ramos on Tuesday, after which prosecutor Harry Dorfman will cross-examine him.

Outside court, Zamora acknowledged that putting Ramos on the stand was risky.

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